Barbell Shrugged - Barbell Shrugged - Mindset of a Champion w/ 2x UFC Champion Dominick Cruz -320

Episode Date: June 20, 2018

Dominick Cruz is an American mixed martial artist. He fights in the Ultimate Fighting Championship and is a two-time UFC Bantamweight Champion. Cruz was also the final bantamweight titleholder of World Extreme Cagefighting. Known as one of the top pound-for-pound fighters in mixed martial arts, Cruz is noted for his unorthodox movement, powerful wrestling base, quick striking, and his tendency to attack from angles in a unique fashion unlike any other fighter on the UFC roster. In this episode, Dom compares maintaining the body of a professional athlete to having a 40 hour/week job. Work needs to be done on the body to keep growing whether or not there are injuries. Dom stresses how importance is it to keeping up conditioning for fighters when they are injured, as they need to be ready to perform when the injury heals. He also discusses how he continues to get better as an athlete while enduring age and injury, and much more. Enjoy! – Doug and Anders ---------------------------------------------- Please support our partners! @organifi - www.organifi.com/shrugged to save 20% @thrivemarket - www.thrivemarket.com/shrugged for a free 30 days trial and $60 in free groceries @OMAX - www.tryomax.com/shrugged and receive a free box of Omega 3 Fish Oils @Onnit - www.onnit.com/shrugged for a free 14 pill bottle of the leading nootropic Alpha Brain and 10% savings on all purchases.   ► Subscribe to Barbell Shrugged's Channel Here ► Subscribe to Shrugged Collective's Channel Here http://bit.ly/BarbellShruggedSubscribe 📲 🎧 Listen to the audio version on the Apple Podcast App or Stitcher for Android Here- http://bit.ly/BarbellShruggedApple http://bit.ly/BarbellShruggedStitcher Shrugged Collective is a network of fitness, health and performance shows that help people achieve their physical and mental health goals.  Usually in the gym, but outside as well. In 2012 they posted their first Barbell Shrugged podcast and have been putting out weekly free videos and podcasts ever since. Along the way we've created successful online coaching programs including The Shrugged Strength Challenge, The Muscle Gain Challenge, FLIGHT, Barbell Shredded, and Barbell Bikini. We're also dedicated to helping affiliate gym owners grow their businesses and better serve their members by providing owners tools and resources like the Barbell Business Podcast. Find Shrugged Collective and their flagship show Barbell Shrugged here: SUBSCRIBE ON ITUNES ► http://bit.ly/ShruggedCollectiveiTunes WEBSITE ► https://www.ShruggedCollective.com INSTAGRAM ► https://instagram.com/shruggedcollective FACEBOOK ► https://facebook.com/barbellshruggedpodcast TWITTER ► http://twitter.com/barbellshrugged  

Shrug family, it's Anders Varner here. Super stoked for this week. We have Dominic Cruz on the show. And just so you know, interviewing Dominic Cruz is the first time I've ever stepped into an octagon. And if you're gonna do that, you might as well do it with a world champ. I thought it was awesome.

His mindset, the way that he designs his training camps, the training, and just the prep that goes into stuff when we dig into these pieces was just really cool to me just to see inside the mind and the training of a real champion. And I am so far from understanding the fight game that just anything that came out of his mouth was new information to me. And anytime I get to kind of lead a conversation with somebody that has been to the highest levels, been through the injuries, been through some of the mental things that

come along with injuries and then climb their way back to the top is just beyond cool to me. Not just from an athletic perspective, but just an understanding of life and purpose and just how people are able to get through adversity and bring themselves back to the top. Last week, I was lucky enough, our boy Mike Bledsoe launched The Strong Coach. You probably heard my voice on the prologue. We did some hanging out. I will be on episode seven or eight of The Strong Coach, but rarely do I get to have interviews where I am just focusing on the life

of a coach. Most of the time when people interview me, they want to know about training programs or the Shrugged Collective or Barbell Shrugged, MovementRx, just things that I'm involved with, but never on my experiences as a coach and how someone can structure a career out of this. This is the future of kind of where I want to spend a lot of my time as well. I know Mike is taking the lead on this, but this past week we launched Proof, which is Viviana Smith. She's awesome. And I journey into the strength and conditioning world through YouTube. So a lot of the same guests and a lot of the people that we work with on Barbell Shrug, but we're taking a more practical approach to understanding and actually watching these people

coach instead of just hearing their methodologies. But one of the things that's so cool to me about the Proof Project is my ability to play some sort of mentorship role to somebody that loves fitness, loves strength conditioning, loves being in the gym, and knows that this is her place to be, but doesn't really have like a know the path. And I've been very lucky in my career to have great mentors, have the right people around me. But at the heart of all this stuff is always this question of why. Like, why would I want to work with her? Why did my mentors want to work with me. And through a lot of just kind of asking myself this question and talking to myself about what separates me from others, I've had just my entire life, whether it was genetic or just something that was just always this fire burning inside me.

I'm just constantly obsessed with understanding what makes the best people in the world the best. And I didn't know it when I was a little kid, but if you went and played street hockey with me, you might have been playing street hockey, but I was out there battling you. It mattered to me who won. It mattered to me if I was getting better. It mattered to me when I was in my backyard playing home run derby who was going to win that day. It mattered who was going to throw the hardest pitches, who was going to hit the most home runs, who was going to be the

leader of that game, and who was going to win. It mattered to me. And that theme has really carried with me throughout my life, whether it was being an athlete, whether it was competing in sports, whether it was opening a gym and wanting it was opening a gym and wanting to be the best gym and wanting to be known as the gym that was at regionals every single year, showing up at the games and having people there, that stuff really mattered to me. In my coaching life, it always mattered to me that I was getting better at something. And most of the time, the technical side of things was not what interests me. What interested me in the things that I was getting

better at was how I was making people feel. How was I getting better at structuring this skill that I had into a career? How was I able to create long-term changes in people's lives versus just improving their squats? This is the piece of the strong coach that I really, really think is valuable is understanding skill development. And so many people think that skill development is just relegated to tactile, tangible pieces where you can see an actual result, you know, push your knees out. Well, that's a skill. You're getting better at it. So we're developing it. And now your squats better. But the pieces to me that are really interesting, we talk about like, where does

your energy go? Where's your attention go? What is your intention when you're paying attention to those things? I think that those things allow us to take a step back and have a much longer term process of understanding skill development. And, you know, focusing on a squat as a coach is fantastic. But you never think about the skill development of how are you interacting with people? How do people feel? When you shake someone's hand and you look them in the eye, what is the first thing that comes out of your mouth? What is the tone at what you talk to them? Are you instantly building credibility? Are you instantly building trust

with them? Is it something that you feel forced or that feels forced? Or is it something that comes very naturally to you? And I feel like every single aspect of your class, of your coaching, the way you talk to people is a skill that you need to be developing. It's not just the pieces that are so obvious to everyone when you're fixing someone's squat or press or understanding joints and functional movement patterns. But how are you engaging an entire room yet making each person feel like they're the most important part of your day? I think that those are the things that you're going to learn in the strong coach and the things that I'm the most interested in learning in this process of mentorship and working with Viviana and other coaches as I grow in my career. I've

been incredibly lucky to have mentors that have paved a path. And every single time I've ever been in a conversation, whether it's business, career development, just, you know, where do I see myself in three, five, ten years? The conversation always boils down to what are the tiny little steps that you're making in every single direction instead of just focusing clearly just on one, especially it being more of a technical side of things. But the skill development of making people feel better, developing trust, looking people in the eye more, being really confident in your message and how you're reaching people and how you're changing their lives. I think it's really important to sit down and just have that conversation

with you of maybe you don't actually need to be a more technical coach. Maybe your technical ability is actually hindering you from understanding how you can become a better coach. I'm really excited for The Strong Coach to come out. I think that the episode that I did with Mike was really, really beneficial for a lot of people that are coaches, maybe athletes that are looking to get a little bit better understanding on the idea of skill development. And I think that it's, it's something that we have to take into consideration for every single thing we do. Um, lucky for us, like, you know, this, this whole idea even comes into the way that I, you know, work with sponsors way that we, we run this show. Um, we work with Organifi and Omax. They're phenomenal companies. I know that I need to have

these products in my life. The green, red, and gold drinks, this like sunrise to sunset piece, I take it every single day. Why? Because I know that my life does not afford me the ability to eat perfectly every single day when we're on the road. I need to get my micro vitamins. I need to have a company supporting our show that's going to not just get you the products you need, but us as hosts, we need these products as well. I highly recommend going over to Organifi. They have the green, red, and gold drink.

Everybody that is going through our link, which is Organifi.com backslash shrugged, these people are, or the people that are going to Organifi.com backslash shrugged. These people are, or the people that are going to Organifi.com backslash shrugged are finding what they are calling the sunrise to sunset. I like to nickname it the shrug stack because I take it all the time and we run barbell shrugged and the shrugged and the stack, they sound cool together. So I call it the shrug stack, but it's the sunrise to sunset. So every morning I wake up, I have my green drink somewhere in the middle of the day I get the red drink and before I go to bed at night I have a gold drink it's phenomenal I don't eat enough vegetables in my life I

wish I did and this is just a another thing that is part of my system to ensure that I am still getting all of the nutrients I need into my life. And luckily enough, Organifi is there to make this stuff happen for me. The next sponsor I'd really like to talk there is about fish oils. I've always been in the know about fish oils. And when the fish oil conversation kind of comes up, I'm like, yeah, it's good. I don't really know why because there isn't some immediate just demand for it in my life. There isn't like a, I take this and I instantly feel

better. It's probably the opposite of what you would consider like a pre-workout because there is no instantaneous feeling. But over a long period of time, the joint muscle tissue, brain cognition, cardiovascular gains, and just your ability to have and to live a life that is healthy. Omega-3s are essential to that. Omax is a phenomenal company. Evan was an amazing interview, just a wealth of knowledge. And they have put together a special deal for shrugged listeners. You're going to get a free bottle of Omax 3 fish oils.

Just go to tryomax.com backslash shrugged, T-R-Y-O-M-A-X-C dot C-O-M backslash shrugged. You're going to get a free bottle of Omega 3 fish oils. And if you have not tuned into that podcast yet, make sure you get over there and check it out. Evan DeMarco. And once again, tryomax.com backslash shrugged. We are going to get into the show. Make sure you check out The Strong Coach, mainly because I was on it. I'm stoked. Bledsoe really helped me up with a spot and he saw some value in the words that I get to speak to you guys about every Wednesday.

And man, I think that coaching is a real art and skill development is really important. And our ability to recognize everything we do in life as a skill that needs to be developed is essential to a long-term career in this job as well as a life filled with happiness and developing a bigger purpose. Enjoy the show, team. Welcome to Marble Shrugged.

I'm Anders Varner. That's Doug Larson. Adam von Rothfelder. We are inside the Octagon at Alliance MMA in San Diego, California with two-time Bantamweight champ. That's me. Dominic Cruz. Welcome to the show. Yeah, thanks for... Welcome to my show.

Honestly, this is the first time I've ever stepped in a cage. Really? Yeah, which is probably pathetic. One. I don't think it's pathetic. I think that's the wrong word to use. I think it's just sad that you haven't had more options to do it. Yeah, well, Adam said your first wrestling match like 10 minutes ago. Look, here's what I'm really looking for.

I just want like a small amount of cauliflower here so people know I mean business, but no real background, nothing to back it up. Well, what we can do is we can hit you in the head with dumbbells. There we go. And then you get the best of both worlds because, you know, you could say it was a power lifting accident. Right? I like that.

I was talking about the towel. I was telling him to take the towel and you rub your ears with the towel. Really looking forward to digging in kind of the mental game. We've been through a bunch of injuries coming back from that and coming back to be champ after multiple ACLs, broken ribs, the works. And where your head's at, going through those injuries, and just how we're able to progress into getting back into the ring here. Yeah, I'm really curious how you stay in shape going through multiple injuries.

I fought MMA for a very short period of time, and I had injuries along the way. And I always felt like I was getting out of shape whenever I was hurt. And if you're fighting, you're almost always hurt in some capacity, and I know that's been true for you in some respects. I think that that would probably be the key to the whole situation with injuries is understanding how to train while you're injured. Yeah.

Because, I mean, if you're a pro athlete, you're going to get injured. It's just eventually you're going to get injured. Excuse me. And as a pro athlete, I going to get injured it's just eventually you're going to get injured excuse me and as a pro athlete i guess the question is i always look at every i always revert everything back to general society like the general average person is working 40 hours a week to pay their bills as a mixed martial artist you make your own money only when you compete so if you only make your money when you compete, then where the money's actually made is in between the competition because you have to stay consistent like everybody else who works 40 hours a week. That's the general average for just somebody who's not a high-level athlete. So if they're working 40 hours a week,

I should be putting in at least that type of work into my body to prepare it. Whether I'm hurt or not, it doesn't stop. If I'm an athlete, my only job is to be an athlete. So if I'm hurt, does that mean I'm not an athlete anymore? That's kind of the question. Then comes, okay, well, I'm still an athlete since I'm hurt. So I still have to exercise that way when I come back. I'm not just, you know, a pile of putty. You got to be strong. You got to have the, everything around the injury has to be strong like it was before you got injured so that when you come back you're not all lopsided and

offset so all that being tied into one equation it pretty much comes down to staying consistent with whatever the injury is and making sure that you're keeping your base set the base is how i refer to it to to athletes, the guys that I train with as the primer to the paint job. So before I paint a big white house and I want to paint it red, I'm not just going to put one layer of paint on there and expect the house to be red, right? I have to put primer first. I have to set it up. I have to prepare the house. So I got to sandpaper it. Then after I sandpaper it, then I got to put the primer down. Probably not just one coat, probably two coats, probably one coat of white. And then I got to dye the primer red so that when I put the second coat of primer red on there, then I can

paint over the top of that. So how many coats does it take before I even get to start the paint job? Three coats of just base. So I'm, I'm constantly working my base 24-7. That's always there. So that's an hour minimum of nonstop work, whatever it may be, running, biking, swimming, lifting, lifting, running, biking, swimming all at once, whatever it may be. You know what I mean? I do an hour straight. Now I got my base set.

So no matter what my exercise is, I have an hour nonstop with no breaks of energy in my muscles, in my body, in my system, in everything. And now with that, I haven't hit the red zones yet. The red zones are what I call the high RPMs. That's like sprinting. That's like fighting. That's like wrestling live. That's any live work, right? Super sets. Stuff like that is what I consider red zone stuff. You work that once your base is set. That's putting the paint down. So first I just set all my primer, set all my bases,

and then once the base is set, the red zone stuff is the easy part. And honestly, I know it might have seemed a little crazy, everything I just said all at once, but, I mean, the base is key. Otherwise, you get hurt when you come back from an injury. So, like, I'm not doing back from an injury yeah so like I'm not doing any red zone stuff right now I'm not doing any live I'm not doing any sparring I'm not doing any super sets all I'm doing is base work so right now I grappled for about an hour hour and a half non-stop limited breaks in between and I'm just setting my base and now I'm still a little

bit hurt so if I go any harder an arm right yeah I broke my arm about four months ago so I'm just taking it easy with that but now when I when this finally stops hurting the day it stops hurting I'm ready to go live I don't have to ease into it because I've already done the easing into it so you feel like you feel like your base is cardiovascular in nature is that what you're referencing you mentioned a bunch of endurance activities for the most part well for fighting yes for fighting because, all my fights, I'm in the top five of the division, so they're usually going to be about five-minute rounds usually, and five of them. So that's 25 minutes of fighting.

Of going hard. Well, that's 25 minutes of red zone. So that's how you've got to equate it. So, like, red zone is considered sprints, right? You guys know what I mean by red zone and base, right? You've got that little heart rate monitor. You've got green, yellow sprints, right? Do you guys know what I mean by red zone and base, right? You got that little heart rate monitor. You got green, yellow, red, right? Anybody ever seen that here?

Yeah, sure. So when you're fighting, you're usually in the yellow and red the whole time. There's very light portions where you're in the green. Green is like your rest, maybe rhythm in between the scrambles. So I'm keeping my green and yellow base set for an hour straight. I keep my body at that work rate, right? Working, working, working, working, working. And then when I finally get done building that base in the green and yellow zones

of my heart rate, that's my cardiovascular base. Now that I have that, I can go into the red zones once my body's strong enough. And when you speak of that type of training philosophy, has that changed in any way as you've gotten older with coming back from an injury as like your first injury was, you know, five years ago, was it? Your first ACL tear, five MCL at the same time? So, I mean, it's different because you're not the same person you were physiologically. So it's like it's hard to break away from that mental.

Well, realistically, that's the biggest thing you have to get away from is everybody. Not saying you said it, but this is the key. What you just said is actually a huge step in this. It's in your brain. So the number one thing you said is, well, you're not the same physiologically. Yes and no. That's true. But who's to say I'm not just better? Everybody assumes that because of injuries, because of years,

because of age, I'm automatically declining. That's not necessarily true if you're doing the right stuff. And so the key is understanding that while you're not the same physiology, while your physiology is not the same, it could be, it could have improved over all this time with injuries, timeout, not getting punched in the head, doing rehab, doing stretching, making sure I'm swimming and not wrestling 24-7. All these things change the body chemistry and make me healthier or more unhealthy. So my key is always knowing that I am heading towards the direction of being better than I was the year before, every single fight. So what do I got to do to make that key?

Set my base, make sure my body's healthy. I believe that as long as I'm healthy, I'm the best in the world. I've proven that. I have systems set up that have proven that. So now it just comes down to that, health, cardiovascular, and has to be at an all-time high at all times. And then strength, athleticism, rhythm, timing, all that stuff comes in camp.

A lot of this stuff comes down to the work ethic too. Like I like when you look at fighters, you talk about a 40-hour work week. That's not right. You're 24 hours a day. That's sleep, nutrition. Every ounce of everything that you're putting into it goes well beyond eight hours. And the consistency and the mental game that goes into

that of just staying on the path where does some of some of that stuff come from for you it's actually a good point and i guess the way that i could break down what you just said is i don't look at it as 24 hours of work yeah i kind of look at it as drinking water or going to the bathroom yeah it's just like your next foot goes in front of the other and if i don't do it my job doesn't get done yeah so it's like you're right i didn't actually think about it that way but you're right my whole life is 24 hours because um for instance you pay for every single thing that goes into your body when you're competing when you're training as hard as we do in here yeah i'm doing, on average, four to five hours

per day, and that's a split shift. So I'll do one in the morning. I rest in between. Now it's hydrate, hydrate, recarb up, get your protein in, get your calories in, get everything right back to where it was when you woke up in the morning all fresh and ready to train for your second session. It's no longer, all right, I'm done training. Now I'm going to go hang out at the beach and have a free day. I'm going to go stretch and hang out with my lady friends and go watch a movie and go shopping oh i'm gonna go shopping oh i can't wait to the girls go to the grocery store but hell no like i got done training and i'm gonna go home and lay like i'm gonna like i'm a mummy in my tomb yeah and just hope that my body feels okay by the next workout you know what i

mean just pray that i wake up and i'm like, ooh, I got extra juice today. I'm fresh. Because there's those days you wake up and I'm telling you, it's like the worst feeling on earth just getting up. Like how am I supposed to go do this second session? I got 12 rounds of mitts with my coach and they're going to switch every round. So they're going to be fresh and I'm going to be tired and i have to find it in me so like there's those days where everybody thinks that it just comes natural to us but it just doesn't it's just a matter of you know doing what you got to do to get that get up and do that second workout and well everything's

a progression and it'd be interesting to see how you kind of layer this stuff in with your athletes because the 24 hours becomes a thing it starts out you're just in the gym enjoying your life as a kid and then all of a sudden you have your first fight you're like man maybe i need to up it a little bit yeah then injuries show up and you have to go back and to the drawing board and figure it out when you're coaching athletes up and coming fighters how are you kind of layering in all of these lessons in which the things you take for granted in your life right now nobody else really knows about so how do you what's the communication with your athletes on like hey these are the little pieces that no one sees behind the scenes it's not just in the gym that i'm starting to think about these things it's when i get out of bed i know everything that's going to happen there's a system to my

morning i get to the gym i know exactly what's going to happen how do you start to talk to your athletes about that stuff honestly that has to that has to be something that they notice on their own and change on their own because that's the hardest part about being a professional is that nobody's here to babysit you yeah that's literally it like none of us here i'm a multiple time world champion and any of these guys that come in here i'm not telling them what to do at all. I'm simply giving them, like, what I did, and it's your choice if you want to take it or leave it, period. It's all here for them.

You got Phil Davis. You got me. You got Jeremy Stevens. You got my coach, Eric Del Firo. You got multiple world champs, high-level coaches, and Brazilian jiu-jitsu world champion, black belts, all over the place. Whatever facet you want to be in, you've got it here. So it's up to you to ask the questions and pay attention to the people that you know have been successful and find out,

all right, what makes Phil Davis successful? Is he just a freak athlete and that's the only reason so nobody can be Phil? No, there's something about what he did. There's a system he built that's made him successful. It's not just him being a freak athlete because there's too much to learn. There's too much to do. There's too many patterns that have made him successful to not pay attention to one of those patterns. And that's what I encourage these athletes to do. I don't tell them what to do. I tell them to pay attention, ask questions, focus. You have to make these little decisions on your own because if I don't tell them what to do. I tell them to pay attention. Ask questions. Focus. You have to make these little decisions on your own because if you don't, you'll never be a champion. That's what separates

everybody. I love that too. There's no sign on the door that says, hey, we're really fucking awesome in here. You should come train. There's like a culture of that here. When you walk around, you're like, oh, that guy. I know him. I've seen him. We don't need to say it. You come in. There's an expectation when you walk in the door that you better show up just to be here today and we don't even care if you're here

honestly we don't we don't care if you're here choice that's your choice because guess what that person on the other side of the cage doesn't care if you skipped or not yeah and neither do we because we're not the person on the other side of the cage we're here to prepare you for that person whoever it may be on the other side of the cage and we're here that if you're that person, whoever it may be on the other side of the cage. And we're here that if you're panicking, we'll help you take away the panic. If you're getting choked out every day, we'll make sure we teach you how to not get choked out in that position so that we fix it. It's not our job to tell you to come every day. If you can't show up on your own, then you're not a professional. It's not our job.

Do you find that you still have a student mentality yourself? Even being a world champion. You're still asking guys like Phil and guys like Eric You know, what do you guys think and still trying to learn on a daily basis? Well the second You try to know everything Not only I think that that's the that's the beginning of the end for you because what you got to understand it's bigger than Excuse me When you know everything it's bigger than obviously you're not learning anymore because you know everything but you're also um not able to relieve yourself of any kind of pressure

so not only are you not learning but you're taking more pressure than anybody in the world because you already know everything so who are you going to revert some of your stress onto if you already know like how am i going to confide in somebody how am i going to how am you going to revert some of your stress onto if you already know like how am i going to confide in somebody how am i going to how am i going to relax if i can't talk to anybody because i know everything already like just relax you don't know anything because every day is a problem a new one so it's a brand new one every single day so i wake up with that notion and i got so like i said i just mentioned all the people i can confide in with any one of my problems yeah sometimes it's you know putting gas in my car sometimes

it's changing a tire sometimes it's um being lonely sometimes it's i can't get out of this you know this position i get stuck here every single day, and I'm not – just every single guy I go with, I get stuck here. How do I fix it? It's always something different. So you've got to figure out a way to adjust. But if you know everything, then you can't ask questions to other people because you already know.

And then you also can't learn anything because you can't ask questions because you already know. So just – you don't know shit. Just remember that. In that case, you'd have to admit that you can't ask questions because you already know. So just you don't know shit. Just remember that. In that case, you'd have to admit that you didn't know which would look bad. And then now you've got the ego hit. That's the problem. The biggest issue of society today is ego, in my opinion.

Just ego, period. If you can just set that aside and we all have it. I have it. I'm fighting it every day. We all fight it. Like it's just what's in us. Because if you don't have an ego, what are you using to drive yourself kind of like, right? Like I'm hyped because I'm better than that guy and I know I'm better than that guy.

Like that hypes you up kind of. But when can you say, okay, but he kind of is better than me here because he keeps choking me in this one position. So why is he better than me here though? It's a very tangible way to know someone's winning as you're blocking out right i swear because i can't tell you how many times i've been there i'm like oh i'm gonna kill this guy today and then i double leg and i'm gonna guillotine and i'm like okay well i mean this is not how i envisioned yeah this isn't right okay all right so i get up i tapped and now i'm like all right so i did smoke him the rest of the day let's say he didn't do one thing to me.

Maybe I choked him 35,000 times and he got me once. What did he do on that one that took away my ego for a second? Let's hold on to that. And then keep that feeling and watch how much better you get instead of holding on to all the wins. Right. And what happens when you hold on to the losses? Well, yeah, that's the other problem. You can hold on to losses too, and I happens when you hold on to the losses well then yeah that's the

other problem right you can hold on to losses too and i'm coming off a loss right now and being as somebody coming off a loss and then i get injured so i'm supposed to come back get this get going on the win streak again and then i break my arm it's like man talk about doubling down on the on the negative right but what i mean i can sit here and just stress and be panicked and be mad and be sad, but it's out of my control. It happened for whatever reason, so I'm just going to build. And I'm building around what I can with what I got. And I'm doing it now slowly but surely.

And then I'll get back to full health, and I'll get back to fighting condition, and I will fight again 100% positive in my mind. I've already made the decision. So it's just be patient and let everything take its course. You mentioned earlier lonely. That's a strange word for someone that's a two-time world champ. Is it? And rolling around on the floor all the time. And rolling, yeah.

And that's not the most common. I would say maybe it is very common, but very few people want to talk about it. That's the ego. Yeah. That's the ego. It's hard because it's embarrassing. When do you learn that lesson? It's embarrassing to admit that you've been lonely, right?

I mean, who wants to say that? It depends who you are. Yeah. Some people can't. The expression is it's lonely at the top. It's an expression for a reason, I'd imagine. But a lot of the people at the top, you'll never hear them say that. They got money, and it's lonely at the top like it's it's expression for a reason i'd imagine but not a lot of the people at the top you'll never hear them say that they got money and it's always perfect social media always paints a perfect picture that nobody ever paints that day that

they're lonely and puts that on social media do they right it just doesn't happen because social media is a giant ego for every single person there is that is the picture of what everybody sees is themselves and the one thing you don't see is who they are on social media so it's the highlight reel of who they want you to think they are it's the ego it's the pit it's a mirror of who everybody thinks they are to an extent um and we all do it because that's the world we're in so how do we stay in touch with both because you do need both you got to have social media you got to have that picture out there to promote and then how do we stay in touch with reality um it's hard but the lonely thing comes just from uh trying to make the right decisions as much as you can i guess you start feeling yourself slowly separate onto a little island the more the more of the right direction you try to go and then your circle

gets smaller and smaller and smaller until you realize that you and a couple people think this way excuse me you and a couple people think this way and uh you feel just alone after a while you start to feel like when you talk about this stuff people look at you a little crazy and they're like ego what i mean you're just like oh you don't want to that's the wrong fear of dealing with themselves it's hard it's and nobody wants to do it yeah self-work it's self-reflection it's putting a mirror in front of your face and looking at yourself and going oh i do suck you know what's the best way you know i mean knowing your story and that there's a I do suck. You know? What's the best way?

I mean, knowing your story, I had a crazy series of injuries fighting myself, and I associated so heavily with being a fighter that I didn't know who I was without fighting. Yeah, that's what I mentioned. Because people said, this is Adam, my fighter friend. That's how everybody introduced me, and then one day I was no longer the fighter friend.

I wasn't even friends with these people. Isn't it interesting when that happens and you don't even realize that it had happened? Yeah. That's exactly how it is. There's a lot of fighters. That's exactly how it goes. And the next thing you know, boom, that's done. And you realize that when they stop calling you that, people stop recognizing you as that.

And people just know you as that. And, oh, but you're hurt. Yeah. Then you go, oh, shit. More like broken. That's all I was. Like, wow. Like, oh, yeah, this is my fighter friend, but he's hurt.

He'll be back. What if he's not back? What is he now? Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. It's like your whole identity is wrapped up. He's just broke.

He's just a broke what? He's just like your tire on a car that's flat, and you're just going to be flat forever. That's how you see yourself. So what if you're a tire and that's your only identity and you're just flat forever? Are you going to stay flat or are you going to find a fix it? So that's what happens a lot to fighters, and I think it's because it's easy to get stuck in this routine where I show up in the morning, go home, chill out, come back at night, show up, go home.

And you do that for two years and then you get hurt. And then what else? You haven't. You've done that for so long. And not only is that a habit, but it's who you are. And fighting is such a focused thing that if you have anything else, it takes away from fighting. So what you tend to do as a fighter is just cut everything out. Everything.

Family, girls, you know, food, water, sometimes everything. So when that happens, friends, like when that happens and then you get hurt, what do you have? You've got no identity. You've got no career. You've got no friends. You've got no family. You've got nothing.

And that's what happens with a lot nothing and um that's what happens with a lot of injuries that's what happens with a lot of pro athletes so the key to that is having something bigger than your career i mean you gotta you gotta have more to you than than just your career you gotta have like what else makes us happy i guess right i i came to that that's the only reason i'm talking about it and you asked me I came to a point where I didn't have all that stuff and I was like wow it's just a it was a crappy position

where you realize you just don't have a job and as men if we're not what a Chris Rock said he said there's only a couple things that that I get get love no matter what and that's kids and women you know men we only get love no matter what, and that's kids and women. Men, we only get love if we provide something.

Unconditional love. Only two things, a couple things again, unconditional love. Men, women, and pets. Sorry, women, children, and pets. That's what it is, women, children, and pets. And men, we get love if we provide something. That's the unconditional love we get. So then you lose your job, and then you're no longer providing.

What are we as men? I didn't feel like a man. I just felt useless. I was telling my wife one time, like when a guy loses his job, that's the equivalent of a really attractive female being like a burn victim temporarily. It's like all of a sudden she loses all of her beauty. Like who's going to love me now? I couldn't agree more, but is that really true right do do people really

believe that like does it say it shouldn't be true it'd be nice if it wasn't right nothing is really true but i think people fall into believing that for a period of time yeah i think it's possible to believe that but it's definitely possible to not believe it as well yeah like a lot of people just it's hard for them to get over that type of mindset. I think the more it happens, probably the better you can adapt to it. It's just like if you lose one fight, you're like, man, no one's ever going to think I'm a great

fighter again. Then you come back and you win a couple more fights. The next time you lose, maybe it's not quite as bad, especially once you lose your own. I don't know. What are your thoughts? Do you think it's possible to battle through that and not believe that's the case? Which case? What do you mean?

Well, like, if a guy loses his job or a fighter loses, you know, you get injured and now your career is over, like, some people would fall into that mindset of, like, I'm valueless. Like, I'm not important anymore. I'm not special anymore. Now I'm just Doug now. Who cares about just Doug? I was fighter Doug or fighter Adam or fighter Dom or whatever. And I think that's exactly what we're talking about is what you just said like it's i'm talking

about fighting but it's a it's really just a metaphor as to everybody in the world who goes through this in life right you've got you said you went through it you i'm sure we've all gone through it where you hit that point where you're just like i'm a loser because I don't have this. We put too much into this. That's what it comes down to. When really this should be look inside for us. I know it's just, it's getting really deep and weird. I don't want to make it weird. It's the truth though.

Like if that one thing that you had all your energy into was actually a light that you had on your own spirit, your heart, and your mind, we'd never really need this. We would be this, right? What if we were that? What if we were the focus? We were the happiness. We were the thing that made us happy, just us, just because we chose to. Not fighting made me that. Like if that's the key that now when I go back to fighting, because I am the thing that makes me happen without fighting, without anything else. When I go back to fighting now, I've now I can enjoy it because I don't need it. I don't have to have it. It's just a cherry on top to a good life I already live. And that's what I realized after I got back from the three years laid off is I went through two to constructive, two reconstructive surgeries on my knees,

and then I came back and fought a guy named Takaya Mizugaki. I was out for a total of over three years, about three and a half years, without fighting with the knee surgeries. And I remember coming back, and I was coming down the stairs in Vegas, and I had been interviewing guys for three years because I had gone into the commentary and the broadcasting stuff. And when I came down the elevator, they had a camera on me, or the escalator. They had a camera on me coming to baggage down from the plane to San Diego into Vegas.

And they're watching me come in. And then they're going to take me to the hotel. And they got me on camera. Well, it was surreal to me because the career had started again right then. I was not videoing somebody else. I was not questioning somebody else. The cameras were here to watch me fight and watch me get ready for my fight after a three-and-a-half-year layoff.

So it was like it was really, wow. I didn't even know they were here to do this. That's how happy I am with life. I don't care about the cameras i don't care if i i'm here and i get to compete i don't care if i win i don't care if i lose i just made it here i'm not hurt like nothing's hurt i'm here i'm on the escalator i'm getting my baggage i have nothing else to do but cut weight so 100 fact i'm showing up to fight in four days. That was it. That's all I needed. And when I had that feeling of happiness, like knowing that if I didn't fight, I was okay. And if I did fight,

I'd be happier. That's when I realized, okay, I filled a gap somewhere. Like these injuries did something different. Because before, I would come down that escalator with nothing but fear. Fear, the biggest fear, because I needed to win. Because if I didn't win, I couldn't have a future, and I couldn't have a house, and I couldn't pay my bills, and I couldn't help my mom get out of her house, and I couldn't get my mom paycheck, and I couldn't get my brother out of there, and all this stuff because I needed to win because I was a loser. And fighting was going to make me not a loser.

And being a champion, I'll have everything I ever wanted. I'll get the car, the girl, all the glamour, all the fame. It'll fix everything. Everybody will love me because I'm champion. Wrong. Wrong. All wrong. This ain't a two-shirt song.

It's all wrong. What happens is you'll be sad because you'll get your title and you'll have it and you'll be home for a week and realize nothing changed except you got a couple more sponsors. They got to go promote the next fight. Yeah, it they just move right on nothing changes in your life like i mean things change here and there like yeah you might get some new people but you realize if those new people came with the new title they're not very new good people so you learn that too and it's like whoa there's so much more to it than just you got to have the love and happiness completely alone with nothing in a box in yourself.

And when you have that, everything else around you becomes better. Truck family, hope you guys are enjoying all of this with Mr. Dominic Cruz. What a savage this guy is. I really, really enjoyed this interview and I got to go into the octagon with the champ. Wanted to talk about our sponsors, Onnit. I freaking love hanging out with Onnit. They're so good. They take such good care of us.

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program specifically designed to get you from where you're at to where you're going in a manner that is going to yield long-term results and no injuries. The programs are beautifully written and it's been a lot of fun to see how many people are coming into the program vault and seeing results already um so get into shrug collective.com backslash vault and come hang out with us shrug collective.com backslash vault let's get back to the show it's a guarantee it's just that way so where do you when when you think i was dominic the fighter now that's just an expression of who i am correct what do you How do you see yourself in this body now? What is the purpose behind this expression? Yeah, this purpose now fighting for me is just helping me to push the limits

to how tough and what kind of barriers I can really break in my life. It becomes an art. It's an art. It's a martial art. You start to understand it. When I started this thing, it was just piss and vinegar. You're just mad. A lot of anger.

A lot of stuff to get rid of out of my body. Just negative energy to just put onto something. And it worked for a long time. And I got to a very high place on that frequency. And then I hit a point where I blew my body out because I needed it too much. And there was no peace. There's no yin and yang in between it. It was just drive, drive, drive, drive, drive, drive, go, go, go, go, go, go, go.

No peace. There was no peace. There was no let off. And so the injuries forced me to learn the peace, forced me to learn the let off, forced me to sit in my body with no other choice except sit on your hands and learn to be calm in your body. You don't have a choice. This is it. You got three years of it. ready yeah no i'm not ready i'm not ready i was not ready i was not ready you got

to watch your own brain you know you're trapped it's like being in a prison cell i swear to god when you were working as hard as i was it's just like you might as well put me in a prison cell i was just in hell yeah that's just like the there just like a story in athletics where we just go, go, go. And then one day your body's like, you know what? Sorry. This isn't going to work anymore. And now your mind is forced to do the work instead of your body. And that's what I realized.

I go, oh, shit, my body's just had enough. So this is a switch in your life where you switch it. Every ounce of championship training I wore my body down with i switched it to my mind spirit and heart that's it i just switched it and you go i was sitting in my in my house with my knee and this thing going how do you switch the physical to the mind the body and the spirit or mind heart and spirit how do i how do i even begin that like you can't pick it up and curl it. You can't sprint it. I didn't understand it. I didn't even know where to start.

So I needed a lot of help. And that's the first step is understanding you need it. Then once you understand you need it, you'll do something to find it if you want it bad enough. Otherwise, you'll just sit there and say, oh, I'll figure it out myself, and then nothing will ever happen. So did you take the same approach to that that you took to the physical aspects of MMA, like finding coaches and or training partners or anything that's the equivalent?

That's why I don't understand why anybody does this sport alone. I've done sports my entire life. The highest level in sports, the highest, NFL, NBA, the most money that's paid, right? Do any of those guys not have a coach? They're still MMA fighters trying to coach themselves yeah how it's just ridiculous it's like that the best sports in the world have coaches for a reason we can't physically do that to ourself so yes i went and i found what i needed in the mind the heart and the spirit that i wanted to mold myself into, just like you would do in the gym industry.

If I'm not going to go train with Team Alpha Fail because I don't like their style, why would I want to mold myself into that? I'd rather go train with Team Alliance because what they're doing makes more sense for me, so I'm going to train with them. I'm going to do the same thing with my heart, my mind, and my spirit. Find that person that builds it the way

I want. Who has those things in spades that I'm attracted to? What type of person can I stand next to and feel a positive energy of success that I can't really explain, but it's there? Has anybody ever felt that type of person before? I've felt that. And when I felt that person, those are the type of people that I know can build that part of my life. And've felt that and when i feel that person those are the type of people that i know can build that part of my life and they have a certain kind of peace they don't need to fight every day because they've already figured certain things out that i haven't figured out there's a great yeah there's a great uh there's a great term called the sum of six where they talk about you're the sum of the six people you spend the most time with and being able to be

around those positive people and how they uh can help transform your own emotions and personalities and give you those outlets that you need and that that rub you hear those things right i've heard that too yeah and then everybody goes oh yeah the artist takes you know surround yourself with good people yeah but why right for what and what do you mean by good people what's good like ask be be specific right like extra specific in your needs in your needs and what you know you want in your mind It's good. Be specific. Extra specific. In your needs. In your needs and what you know you want in your mind, your body, or your mind, your heart, and your spirit.

You have to know what you want, and what does that mean? What are those three things? Does anybody even know? When was the last time anybody had a conversation about those three things other than just be ready to kill somebody and be strong and be tough and have heart? Everybody says have heart. what does that mean is that what got you to alliance is the search to find somebody that was going to take you to the next level not just physically you know technique wise or whatever eric del fiero is what brought me to alliance and brandon vera is that like the embodiment of these

things that you were seeking and a little bit well er of practice. Eric is one of the guys that agrees with me on everything I'm saying. So he's on the same path I am, but his is different than mine. But because we're on our own paths looking for the same thing, we're growing together. So that's what we want. So it's working. Excuse me. And when I met Eric, that's what it was.

It was that. He was a guy who didn't want to be in my corner and be seen on camera he just wanted to see me be a world champion and then he wanted to go hide in the corner after he made me world champion what is it like when you walk down that's a good dude right but you you go through this transformation and what is what is it like walking into the octagon now verse three years ago, five years ago, and kind of the mindset of where you're at just entering in? I feel like there has to be a more peaceful, just less aggressive,

less I'm just going to come destroy you mentality. There's been that, but that's what's hard is every camp is different. So every camp brings different problems different stresses different things that force you to tap into a different type of emotion for whatever reason so i've had fights where i've been hurt and i've had to type into emotion in order to get through the pain and i shouldn't need emotion in any fight ideally i want zero emotion zero feeling i want to be um open to everything but attached to nothing. That's the goal in a fight. Open to everything, attached to nothing. But if you blow your knee out, I'm going to need to be attached to the anger for you blowing my knee out so that I have the goal to get through it and ignore the pain sometimes you got to attach yourself to an emotion just to get through because it's the battle of you got to pick the the worst of the two right and i've had that in fights where i've just been so injured going into them that i've just had to attach to something and then i've had other fights where i've been completely healthy and then i'm in the zero and i'm in the i'm in the

point where i'm open to everything and attached to nothing. And when that happens, that's when I'm me. That's when I'm the real. That's when you can be at your best. You feel like being overly emotional in a fight leads to just poor decision making? Like I said, it just depends on where you're at. But generally speaking, yes. Generally speaking, if I had a choice between use emotion or have zero attachment and no emotion, I would always choose zero attachment and no emotion i would always choose zero attachment

and no emotion just unless i'm hurt do you think there was a drug what i'm saying there's a there's a happy medium where you got to kind of find a a push because the hurt is more than than you can handle and so you need something to hold on to to get you through the pain and then then it's okay to latch on to something do you think do Do you think there was an emotional correlation between your first string of injuries? Because you said you went into all these fights just like a bull with aggression and angst. And you were younger. And then all of a sudden, the injuries, was that a manifestation of that amount of pent-up energy? Do you feel like that was something that had to do with it?

Yeah. I mean, it was because I didn't have that yang part. Like I was saying, I had the yang, but not the yang. I was just driving, working, working, working. And here's the irony is I'm doing all that hard work and everybody goes, dang, he's the hardest worker in the gym. Generally, the hardest worker in the gym is the one who's suffering the most outside of it. Don't forget that. Because if you can deal with that kind of pain, there's something you're running from.

Always. The gym is their therapy. That that's it and it's our drug anybody who can take the most pain they can do the they can do that plank longer than anybody they're dealing with some demons i i would almost bet my savings account on it yeah because it takes something different to have the goal to get through a little longer than everybody else what do you have that i don't just pure stubbornness where's the stubbornness come from some kind of you you pull that from something that comes from somewhere for all of us right on my man we gotta respect your time you gotta get home thank you guys i gotta get some rest i got more workouts that that tomb is that a real thing? You actually have a tomb? I just sit like La Mumia. I super appreciate it, man.

This is awesome to kind of get inside the mind of the fighter here. I don't know if it's good to get inside of it. No, it's good. Sorry for you guys if I freaked anybody out. No, I think any time you're allowed to add depth and you've been through the emotions of a long career, I think very few people probably understand, me being one of them, what it's like to stand in an enclosed container.

There's a lot of thought, man. Yeah. Obviously. You're standing, looking someone in the eye, like, dude, I got to do this right now. You're about to do this to me. We got to figure this thing out because there's a big prize at the end of it. There's a lot of thinking that happens. You didn't get into it because like life was so pleasant no nobody's

like you know what this mansion's too much yeah i'm gonna go try and fight people no it's well that's that was my point maybe it was yeah maybe the mansion was perfect why do they have demons from living in that mansion their whole life? That's the question. Because they will go fight still. BJ Penn grew up with tons of stuff. They called him one of the more well-off kids at a helo. And he was one of the best fighters of all time.

What demons was he fighting? What has he what has he got to deal with that's for everybody who's dealing with those things to figure out and if you don't generally those are the guys they retire and come back retire come back retire come back retire come back because they retire didn't know they had demons ever never dealt with the demons ever and then said oh i can't do this real life stuff. I got to go back to run from my demons, get back in there, maybe take an ass whooping and then retire again because they realized they weren't good enough.

And then they come back because they still don't want to deal with their demons. And then they're running back and forth, back and forth. And that's the pro athlete life. If you're not careful, deal with your demons, love yourself without the sport, love yourself in a paper box, and then everything else will come to you in success, in my opinion. Just an opinion. There it is. Where can people find you?

DominantCruise.com and on my Twitter as well. Facebook, all that stuff. Dominant Cruise, pretty easy to find. I'm doing the Fox Sports Desk color commentary for the UFC. And you guys can see me at Physical Culture 101 with Tommy every now and then too. Love it. Thanks, guys. Appreciate the time. Yeah man. Thank you.

You can check me out at VonRothfelder or at strongcoffeecompany.com Awesome. Yeah. You can check me out Douglas E. Larson on Instagram and of course everything Barbell Strugged. Make sure you follow this guy behind the cam. Colton on the cam at BitsbyCo on Instagram.

I'm at Anders Varner. Come and hang out with us at movement-rx.com, shrugged.thelowbackfix.com. Shrugged listeners saving $20 on their first program. Come and hang out with us. We'll see you here next Wednesday. Yeah. Thank you for tuning in this week, Dominic Cruz. What an awesome guy.

What an awesome guy. What an awesome interview. Hopefully we'll be able to get back down and interview him here in the near future again. What a blast. I just want to thank our sponsors again. Organifi with their Sunrise to Sunset. I take this thing every day. The green, the red, the gold. Get in there.

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